Objective: The objectives of this study were to estimate the prevalence of Hepatitis C among six Italian Local Health Units LHUs , to describe patient and antiviral drug characteristics, and to estimate the health care consumption rates and related costs for the management of patients affected by hepatitis C virus HCV infection by using data from routine clinical practice.
All patients who had a record related to HCV during the enrollment period July 1, , to December 31, and who had at least 6 months of data available prior to the first HCV record were included.
The date of the first record related to HCV during the enrollment period was considered as a proxy of diagnosis and used as the index date. Patients were followed from the index date up to 1 year, death, or exiting the database. We also evaluated descriptive patient's characteristics and treatment patterns, and estimated health care consumption rates and related costs for the management of the HCV patients. The prevalence of HCV was estimated to be 0.
During the follow-up period, Conclusion: Our findings showed that, in the Italian real-world setting, only a small proportion of HCV-infected patients received an antiviral treatment. Despite the current low prevalence of HCV, the economic impact of such disease remains high. Keywords: antiviral drug; health care resources use; hepatitis C virus infection; prevalence; real-world data.
Abstract Objective: The objectives of this study were to estimate the prevalence of Hepatitis C among six Italian Local Health Units LHUs , to describe patient and antiviral drug characteristics, and to estimate the health care consumption rates and related costs for the management of patients affected by hepatitis C virus HCV infection by using data from routine clinical practice.
